HOW BRANDS WIN BLACK FRIDAY

Tips To Opt imize Your Si te For The Sales Event Of The Year

You’ll no doubt have read numerous articles and whitepapers detailing just how important this period is for your site. But you work in eCommerce, you know this, and you’re looking for practical ways to give yourself an edge, without drowning in stats and indulgent prose focused on scene setting rather than actionable insights, so let’s cut to the chase shall we?

This report will provide insights without the fluff, detailing 3 reasons why certain brands are set to reap the rewards on Black Friday and the subsequent peak period. See where your brand stacks up against those who are leading the pack, assess your eCommerce site’s maturity, and explore the recommendations to ensure you’re fully equipped to maximize the user experiences and sales on your digital properties.

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THE WINNERS HAVE MOVED

ON FROM THEIR RELIANCE

ON LEGACY TOOLS

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Traditional analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Adobe are great at providing top-level insight, but can’t tell you why users behave the way they do in-page, or measure the performance of your digital content at an elemental level. Testing tools are great at making on-site optimizations, but if one variant wins, most eCommerce teams struggle to really understand why.

Even fewer brands track the successof that variant after the original test has concluded. The winners will be mature in their UX analytics and ability to quickly surface detailed, in-page insight into their visitors’ behavior, for every segment, device, and across any date range.

Enhance your toolkit, and add a critical layer of insight to your strategy.

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Their teams can make on-the-fly optimizations to improve the experience and boost conversions as sales are happening.

The Black Friday winners will have approached this peak period with proactivity. They’ll already know which areas of their sites performed well from last year’s period, those that didn’t, the copy that worked, the content that drove the most purchases, the most popular items, and much more. Essentially they’ve conducted a detailed audit of their previous Black Friday events, and applied all of the findings to their site structure and product features this time around.

Whilst proactive in the run up to Black Friday, these brands also have the tools at hand to be reactive on the day. They’re able to make live changes within minutes of Black Friday promotions going live, based on behavioral insight available at the click of a button.

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• Have you anticipated previous trends and how your site performed on the same day last year, and implemented the recommendations this year?

• Have you analyzed data well before Black Friday to know which products are popular with your usual visitors in order to mechandise astutely?

• Can you retroactively analyze behavior across any date range, device and visitor segment?

• Do you know how to target your audience by studying the behaviors they adopt on your website — such as those visitors who are in a mood to buy on Black Friday.

• Do you know the performance of every block of content on the page, how it drives engagement and impacts the conversion rate?

See how your pre-Black Friday approach stacks up:

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• Do you understand the impact of your discounts? Do your customers have any interest in them? Which discounted products perform best? What copy or imagery drives the most engagement, and leads to the most conversions?

• On Black Friday, are you able to ascertain (and resolve) within minutes what content is engaging your visitors, what is the ROI of your offers, and what areas of your sites are causing the most frustration?

• Can you see how registration/sign in forms are affecting conversion rates?

Tip:Offer assurance messaging on the cart page, along with specific and clear delivery options, and return and refund policy information.

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Use CaseFeelunique realized that their sub-category pages drove a much higher conversion rate than other areas of their site, but they were only seen by 7% of their total visitors. The left hand image displays click rate, which is the total number of clicks distributed across that area. The right hand image shows the same categories with the conversion rate per click metric.

The Feelunique team realized that there were certain categories which were extremely popular and converted better than others.

This information, available at the click of a button, enabled them to re-prioritize the sub-category page so the highest performing categories were the most viewed.

Conversion rate per click

Click rate

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UX TipVersace changed their CTA so that visitors could choose to be notified if an item they selected was not currently available in the desired size.

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UX TipBoux Avenue allow their visitors to see the front and back of their lingerie. Experiment with different product views and measure the impact on engagement and conversion.

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UX TipAllsaints displays available sizes when you hover over the product on a category page.

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THE WINNERS CAN EASILY

ANALYZE ON-SITE VISITOR

JOURNEYS

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The winners of Black Friday will be able to analyze visitor journeys better than most, and understand where visitors are losing interest, which pages drive journeys towards conversion, and how visitors from different sources navigate the site.

Having a visual overview of every visitor segment and how they flow through your site is critical to reactivity.

The ability for brands to measure the specifics of mobile visitor behavior as well as how their international visitors behave is also crucial, and the winners will be able to pinpoint this in a matter of clicks.

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• Can you quickly get an overview of a specific past Black Friday segment (e.g first time visitors), on a particular device (e.g mobile) who abandoned the checkout after reaching a certain cart value (e.g $50)? Do you understand why this happened?

• Do you know why different visitor segments are leaving your website on specific pages?

• Do you know whether visitors navigate differently depending on which source they came from, and what those differences are?

• Can you take a deeper look at your test results via segmentation? Can you understand the impact of a test variant against different groups of visitors, instead of simply analyzing the results across your entire visitor base?

• Do you know how your desktop site compares to your mobile site, and whether visitors behave differently during Black Friday?

• Are you aware of behavioral differences by country on Black Friday, and have you reflected these habits in the UI of your international sites?

See how your pre-Black Friday approach stacks up:

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Use CaseJourney analysis showed that most visitors opt to go to the checkout directly, rather than visiting the basket pages first. Dune wondered, is the basket page a page that is worth circumventing? Or should we encourage visitors to go there?

When looking at the page comparator, they spotted that visitors who go through the checkout without having seen the basket page convert at a significantly lower rate than those visitors who do reach the basket page. They also have a lower average cart value, tend to view fewer pages, and spend less time on the site.

Dune tested to increase the prominence of the ‘view bag’ CTA in the added-to-bag pop up by making it a more obvious call to action. This resulted in a +2.13% (mobile) and +4% (desktop) increase in conversions.

User who reached the checkout

User who didn’t reach the checkout

This sunburst diagram gives a visualization of customer journeys from landing pages (the innermost ring) outward:

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Before

After

Reached checkout with basket

Reached checkout without basket

+2.13%increase in coversions(mobile)

+4%increase in coversions(desktop)

Page Comparator

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• For cosmetics purchases, the average Black Friday cart of US customers ($105.90) is almost twice the average cart of France-based users ($57.60).

• The luxury industry has more uplift in Black Friday conversions (+114%) than any other industry.

• Those who buy a gift card have shorter sessions by more than 5 minutes than those who make a regular purchase.

• Mobile cart abandonment rates fall by 7% on Black Friday.

Did you know:

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THE WINNERS CAN EASILY

IDENTIFY AND RESOLVE

VISITOR FRUSTRATION

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Errors are fatal on Black Friday.If a certain image is unclickable, if a certain form field is preventing visitors from checking out, the cost of not resolving these quickly could be huge.

Ensuring the checkout process is seamless is of vital importance. This is an area of high drop off, and brands must ensure they’re able to anticipate as well as react to any causes of frustration in this area.

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• Are you aware of your site’s full capacity and can it deal with any surge in traffic?

• Do you know what are the most common issues your platform will encounter on Black Friday?

• What are the biggest UX issues that irritate your visitors?

• Do you know which form fields cause the greatest visitor frustration?

• Have you catered for the possibility of items being sold out and how to engage with disappointed visitors?

• Is your checkout process as efficient as it should be? Are there any unnecessary steps?

• Do you know the main reasons people abandon their cart with products already added to their baskets?

• Have you defined an email remarketing strategy for those who have left items in their basket?

The Winners Checklist:

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Use CaseMoss Bros ran a test on their Basket page where the ‘voucher/discount code’ box would be opened by default rather than having to click on the copy to expand.

After positive results of the AB test, this was hardcoded on site, but the copy remained underlined which made it look like a CTA.

With ContentSquare’s zone analysis tool, the Moss Bros team spotted a high click recurrence on this non clickable line of copy. Users were repeatedly clicking on the underlined copy, mistaking it for a CTA. With the voucher/discount code box already expanded, these clicks did not result in anything, potentially causing frustration.

Moss Bros removed the underlining from the copy, and made it look less like a CTA to encourage voucher interactions, and reduce pain points in the checkout funnel.

Before After

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UX TipForever 21 ensured their checkout experience is as seamless as possible by allowing visitors to update the cart (colour/size/quantity) thanks to a side slider window.

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• 40% of people will leave a web page if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

• 79% of online shoppers won’t return to make a purchase if they have to wait too long.

• On average, the typical checkout process requires 14.88 fields, which is twice as many as necessary.

• Across all channels, bounce rates averaged approximately 33% on Black Friday, representing a 7% increase.

• Mobile visitors are 35% more likely to abandon their cart than desktop users.

• Those who abandon the cart see 34% fewer pages and spend 34% less time on site than those who buy.

Did you know:

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Tip:Set an alert for 404 pages to capture any unexpected dud pages.

Tip:Ensure your delivery costs and options are clearly specified.

Tip:Create an email list to pursue clients after they purchase or to communicate before Black Friday.

Tip:Streamline your checkout, removing any unnecessary form fields.

Tip:Ensure you have reassurance messaging on your basket page and are displaying the pay CTA prominently above the fold.

Tip:Keep customers committed. Show when a specific deal ends and how many people are looking at a product.

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There’s no doubt Black Friday is an important time for eCommerce businesses, but it shouldn’t act as the annual clean-up of your optimization processes. The winners of Black Friday will apply these lessons year-round, maximising their returns at every opportunity.

Advanced technologies like UX analytics are crucial to empowering digital teams to work faster, smarter, and more efficiently.

This creates breathing room to prepare for eCommerce events like Black Friday well in advance.

Conclusion

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About ContentSquare

To Book a Demo:contact-us@contentsquare.com +1 (646) 590 6974

ContentSquare is a user experience (UX) analytics and optimization platform that helps businesses understand how and why users are interacting with their app, mobile and web sites.

We compute billions of touch and mouse movements and transform this knowledge into profitable actions that increase engagement, reduce operational costs and maximize conversion rates.

Using behavioral data, artificial intelligence and big data to provide automatic recommendations, ContentSquare empowers every member of the digital team to easily measure the impact of their actions and make fast and productive data-driven decisions to optimize the customer journey.